It has to be frustrating. Every single day, there are hundreds of newarticles written about the iPhone, about what it is, what it isn’t, and lots of stuff way in between. About the only news that actually concerns Apple’s former “main” product line, personal computers, is the recent report that sales of MacBooks and MacBook Pros have topped 14% in the U.S. retail market. That would be unheard of just a year or two ago.

Sure, Apple’s notebooks just got minor speed bump enhancements, so they are current with Intel’s state of the art; well at least the MacBook Pros, which sport the new Santa Rosa chipsets and all. So it’s not as if Apple hasn’t been lying low.

Then again, there hasn’t been any action on the iMac front in months, and I have several friends and clients that are looking to buy one once they’re assured that the model they choose won’t become obsolete the very next day. But other than enhancing the processors, graphic chips and maybe adding more drive storage and RAM, what is Apple to do? Make the white case brushed aluminum? Does that really make all that much of a difference, except to those of who feel that externals need to be upgraded every so often to stay relevant?

There’s also the Mac mini that some suggest is due for the closeout bin any day now, because not an awful lot are being sold. This would be unfortunate, because I think the mini is an excellent computer for the small business environment. In fact, I gather they’re even being used as cheap Web servers, which argues strongly in favor of their reliability. On the other hand, I suppose this model has been Apple’s reluctant stepchild. I suspect they were pushed kicking and screaming into entering the cheap PC arena, and it tends to be ignored more than it should.

But everyone I know who has purchased a Mac mini absolutely loves it. From the tiny form factor to generally good performance — if you’re not into playing computer games  of running 3D rendering operations of course — it can definitely get the job done. It’s also a wonderful way to leverage the display and input devices you may have salvaged from the last PC.

I can’t say much more than you know about the Mac Pro. I haven’t added one to my roster yet, but the folks I know who use them say they are superb professional workstations, capable of absolutely blistering performance even if you don’t possess the cash to upgrade to eight cores.

But there is still something missing in Apple’s lineup, and it’s a model I’ve argued for previously, and others have as well.

It’s an expandable desktop computer with, say, the guts of the iMac, but without the built-in display. Now I realize Apple made its reputation on all-in-one computers, and certainly a notebook fits into that category. But if you want a full-blown desktop with easy expandability beyond a memory chip or two, you’re forced to go with a Mac Pro, and is probably too much of a computer for most of you.

So what does Apple offer to fill this market? No, the Mac mini won’t cut it. It’s not that a computer with the innards of the MacBook is necessarily a bad thing. But it’s not built for simple expansion. Even adding RAM requires flexibility with a putty knife, and that strikes me as an awfully silly design choice.

But what about a middle-of-the-road expandable box with, say, two internal slots (one for the graphic card of course), a second hard drive and maybe half the RAM slots of the Mac Pro? Equip it with the same processors as the iMac, from the Intel Core 2 Duo family, and sell it for, say, $999.

I can, of course, see the arguments against such a box. It will cannibalize sales of the iMac, and thus work against Apple’s profit margin. But a sale is a sale, and I can see legitimate reasons why the iMac won’t be suitable for a particular purpose, and the Mac Pro would be gross overkill, just as the Mac mini would be severely underpowered.

Of course, having a logical solution doesn’t mean Apple is going to listen. One of the pleasing aspects of their product lineup is that it remains simple across the board. They don’t enter every niche, and it’s pretty easy to figure out which is which. You don’t have to cope with a thousand and one meaningless model names and configurations to figure out the differences. I can even see the sensitivity against the proliferation of products after the Performa debacle of the 1990s.

But I also see where Apple is not offering sufficient choices for their customers, and don’t get me started about a thin and light notebook.

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Years ago, a famous old-time comedian said, “Everybody wants to get into the act!” Well, you’d have to add a strong New York accent and his trademark gravely voice to get the picture, but the words should be sufficient even if you’re too young to remember that classic phrase.

We’re just a few days away from the arrival of iPhone, so talk show hosts have decided that they have had enough of Paris Hilton or the political issue of the day, so why not talk about Apple’s much-anticipated gadget?

The problem is that some of those talking heads have no clue about the product whatever, beyond, say, the small form factor, touch screen and other things you’d catch in one of those increasingly ubiquitous TV ads. So not having any information, and not having enough incentive to spend a minute or so to check Apple’s site for some substance, they decide to wing it.

Take the conversation I heard recently on an XM satellite radio station. The host was commiserating with a caller over the perceived lack of adequate battery life of the iPhone. They cited other phones as an example, and the listener said she had one of the first generation iPods, and complained about its lack of adequate battery life. The assumption, based on no evidence whatever, was that the iPhone would fare no better.

Now it is true that some people reported premature failure of the batteries of those early iPods, or rapidly declining battery life. However, replacements are easy to come by, and if you aren’t inclined to do it yourself, you can have the battery replaced by any one of several online repair shops for a modest fee. So this was an issue that had no traction whatever. In fact, test reports show that most iPods tend to meet or exceed Apple’s battery life claims in nearly every case.

So what has that to do with the iPhone anyway? Did the talking head bother to check what the battery life is actually supposed to be? If he did, he’d realize that Apple has improved the spec to eight hours talk time. That’s more than twice what you get with even the best of those traditional mobile phones. Some won’t even touch three hours, and if you have a Bluetooth headset running, feel lucky to get two hours or even less.

Now it is perfectly true that the iPhone hasn’t actually been tested yet by any independent reviewer. So nobody really knows whether or not Apple’s claims will be confirmed or not. But if the iPod is any example, it’s sure to come pretty close, give or talk a few minutes or so.

However, having a heavily promoted product actually meet any of its advertised claims is nothing worth talking about, I suppose, on a show that doesn’t cater to tech fans. So maybe that’s why the talking head went off on a rant without knowing what he was talking about.

Of course, he’s not alone, and ignorance of this sort isn’t just the province of mainstream talk radio and cable TV news outlets. There are online and print tech writers and analysts who pounced upon the iPhone even before it was even announced, saying that it was Apple’s time to confront an abject failure.

Naturally, I can see where Microsoft, Motorola, Palm and the other companies who make so-called “smart” phones would just love to see the iPhone crash and burn. It would surely justify their investments in existing product lines and current marketing strategy.

But not all these companies are assuming the worst. Competing wireless carriers, for example, are even now reportedly developing talking points to use as ammunition against perceived shortcomings of the iPhone. You can imagine their arguments, such as the fact that it’s too expensive, doesn’t support AT&T’s fastest network, doesn’t have an easily-replaceable battery, has inadequate storage capacity and so forth and so on.

Some of these criticisms might even be true, to some degree. Clearly Apple made a few trade-offs, and having a design reminiscent of the iPod also means that certain features are a given. Maybe it would be nice to have a built-in hard drive with which to store your stuff, but wireless phones are subject to far more abuse than the typical MP3 player. That makes Flash memory a given.

The battery? Well, eight hours talk time ought to be sufficient, and if not, I’m sure there will be add-on battery packs for special circumstances. If the battery craps out prematurely, you’ll probably be able to have it replaced for a small sum just as you can now with the iPod.

Oh yes, there’s the price. Why pay $499 or $599 for a phone when you can get one with the obligatory two-year plan for just a few dollars? Why indeed! Well, they once said the iPod was too expensive, and you all know how that turned out.

Indeed, a lot of the complaints about the iPhone, aside from ignorance of course, come from companies who are scared to death that it might succeed. My message to them is this: If you think you can do better, let’s see your product! Then we’ll have something real to talk about.

Related Articles:

• Memo to Steve Jobs: Don’t Stop with MobileMe!
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  Shows How Not to Convert PC Users to Macs
• Apple Walks the Tightrope
• Is Something Wrong with Apple?